Loss, Strain and Butterflies
by seeyoustandingthere
Summary: GSR. What lead Sara to the two way mirror in Butterflied? Where do they go from there? NB  There's a character who didn't appear til later in the series its deliberate and i'm sorry, please try to see thru it, it wouldn't leave alone until i'd written it.


_DISCLAIMER: As ever these characters and references to other episodes do not belong to me. I know that. I am grateful for being able to give them back as lord knows where they'd end up in my hands. Clifftop wedding, anyone? Just kidding._

_This is set in mid season four, pre GSR. There may be a little poetic licence involved. I'm not here to replicate the series._

_Loss, Strain and Butterflies._

She wanted to throw something at him. She didn't want to sit opposite him at the break room table, each of them quietly sipping coffee and being dragged into idle conversation with Greg and Bobby . She wanted him to look at her, damn it, properly, instead of the furtive glances around the room, so obviously avoiding any trajectory that might include her. I'm not a dirty word, she hissed inside, wishing him a truly frustrating day, that he might know how she felt.

Truth was, he did know how she felt. He had felt skin. This was the aftermath of the night before. The calm after the storm that had broken over them without warning. His eyes had said, without warning. Hers had said, this has been years in the making. He nodded, resigned, and left her. He drove away, defeated, unclear, unsure. She cried. She had a drink. She kicked the refrigerator door shut just a little too viciously. She left a mark.

As did he. She was sore, aching, hurting, full of it. She had gone to bed angry and woken up quietly seething. She had dreaded setting eyes on him and now that she had she was defiant, daring him to deal. He wasn't dealing. He was hiding. He was even talking to Bobby. He never spoke to Bobby above and beyond test results.

This time, she didn't think it was her fault, although she thought that he probably blamed her. It hadn't been her, though, that had called on a Sunday. It hadn't been her who had shown up looking perfectly groomed when not going to work. It had been her that had said the F word, though. To him.

He had earned it. And more. She had expressed herself beautifully, she thought now, far better than either of them were managing in the cold light of day. He was the supervisor of a team of people who looked at dead bodies for a living. He was paid to handle thinking about the worst things in life, and yet he couldn't handle her. She had stood close to him, and he had run away, and she was not going to let it drop.

It could have been worse. He didn't kiss her, she didn't kiss him. If Sara had ever imagined how she'd like it to happen, it had been close. Who was she kidding, she had imagined it six ways from Sunday, different every time, and liked them all. She had no favourite. She had a leaning towards it happening at night, and if pushed, she would have chosen outdoors. She was a night person, she worked and thought better at night. If she ever found herself thinking of him, it was usually in the hours of darkness.

So when they had found themselves pressed together in the dark, she was already at a disadvantage. As their eyes refused to be parted, she had not taken the high road, and neither had he. She had not pulled away, and now he was punishing her for it. And she was pissed about it.

Grissom had called her, and asked if she would do some work with him on a case they were preparing for court. He was writing up his findings, and wanted to take some extra measurements of the scene. It was an alley behind a disused apartment block. It was hardly in the worst part of town, but somehow she sensed he didn't want to go there alone. Always happy to work a weekend, Sara had jumped at the chance, and had met him there.

He had looked good. So good, in fact, that she was suspicious he had come from somewhere she didn't want to know about. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweater, nothing to write home about, she had assumed it wasn't an occasion. Although she was forced to admit that she had worn perfume. And mascara. And straightened her hair. For the second time that day. That aside, though, she had made no effort. And she was rewarded with the decidedly distracting sight of Grissom in an excellently cut black button down shirt and jacket. Blue jeans. Damn. She liked it.

She had only stared once. When he wasn't looking. Or so she'd thought. He'd caught her out, after a few moments, turning into her gaze and returning it. Guiltily she had gone back to her end of the tape measure, making the notes he had asked her to make. He had the hand held imaging device against his hip, holding it with one hand, operating it with the other.

The scene had involved two cars and a pedestrian victim who had turned out to be a suspect in another case. There was circumstantial evidence to link the driver of one of the vehicles to the victim of the pedestrian's crime, a stabbing. But the driver claimed he hadn't been the one to run him down, and had provided details of the second car. But the measurements didn't add up, and even after two or three tries, moving their cars into position, it still wasn't quite right. It was growing dark.

Okay, so it was her idea to play the victim. She hated not being able to figure things out, and liked, when she was stumped, to try a more literal approach. Reconstruction. Grissom's car was close to the wall on the right side, leaving little room for manoeuvre, making it seem like the obvious choice for the guilty vehicle. But the angle looked wrong to Sara, so she got between the car and the wall, angling her body every which way, finding it hard to believe that this car could have run both front tires over the victim's torso. It seemed much more likely it would have slammed him into the wall.

Which was what she was trying to simulate, and Grissom was observing, judging. She was about to give up when something occurred to her.

"Glass," she said, bending down to get a better look. Grissom approached around the back of the car.

"Was this here when you found the body?" Grissom consulted his notes.

"Yes."

"Well, barring any interference, if this was here at the time of the accident, this vehicle couldn't have run over all of this without leaving any trace on it or on the victim." Grissom's brow went up.

"So if this car did hit the victim, it wasn't in this position." They were standing very close to one another, Grissom leaning in to see what she was standing on.

"Which means the driver was lying. About something, anyway." Grissom smiled, retrieving his camera from the passenger seat of the car through the open window. He photographed the glass, then set the camera back down and turned to her with a small smile.

"Thank you, Sara." She smiled, lingering over it. Something sparked, a momentary advance. Trouble. Sara didn't see it in time.

"As if you wouldn't have caught that." She went to move past him, knowing she couldn't fit through the gap between the front of the car and the wall. Round the back was the only way, and he was in front of her. Idly she placed her hands on him, to move him out of the way. If he hadn't flinched, she would never have looked up.

Looking up, of course, was what floored her. At first it seemed like a moment of anticipation. He seemed to be staring, waiting, wondering, caught in the moment like she was. But then there was something in his eyes that made her look closer. Her touch had had some effect on him – something she wasn't sure she had read correctly. Unwelcome? Maybe. Uncomfortable? Possibly. Unbearable? On some level, perhaps.

"What's the matter?" she asked, letting go of him. He shook his head silently, still looking. It made her a little angry. Of all the years of … she didn't want to re-think it all, it made her weary. Suffice to suggest she had imagined them past this. She held up her hands, clearly forming a barrier between them.

"Sorry," she said, sarcasm brimming, still unable to look away.

"What for?"

"Personal space, and all that."

He didn't look away, but opened the car door between them. There was so little space as it was, and this gesture forced her back into the corner made between the front of the car and the wall. He got into the car, breaking the gaze, and she felt cold. Separated, as though the door and the silence presented the truest glimpse of the state of their relationship.

"Thanks for your help," he said, out of the open window, and turned the key in the ignition. She watched, anger and sadness competing within her, as he backed the car carefully away from her until he had clearance to drive slowly away. She swore, and she did not do it quietly. She was sure he heard, and she hoped that he had.

Sara's mood did not improve when Sofia made an appearance. She came bearing good news, that a suspect they were waiting to interview was in the interrogation room. It didn't matter – the sight of her was still enough to set Sara on edge. Helped little by the warm smile Grissom gave her, as if to warn Sara off. Take a cold shower, Sidle, and stop reading into everything I do, he seemed to say, as he stood. Yeah right, Sara thought, irritation building. She followed him down the hall, noting that he kept pace with Sofia two feet ahead of her the whole way, and deciding that today, this was deliberate.

When they reached the interrogation room, Sara realised she didn't want to go in. A side effect of everything that was Grissom, the insecurity and imbalance that brought when things were going this way, was doubt. Self doubt, professional doubt. He was her touchstone, and if he was treating her like he didn't care if she was there or not, her usual summation was to reason that she might as well not be.

So, without saying a word, she ducked into the observation room and let them go in alone. Through the two way mirror she saw Grissom sit down, counted how long it would take. He'd introduced himself to the suspect and Sofia had turned on the recording device before he looked around. In a moment he stood, opening the door, looking around in the hall. Sofia looked quizzically to him.

"Problem?" She asked.

"No," he said, defiantly, and resumed his seat. Bile rose in Sara's throat. As if Sofia would be the one to send out the search party.

It took hours, or what seemed like hours, and in that time Sara's anger simmered slowly down to mere pain. Rejection, her old friend, loomed somewhere over her shoulder as she sat in the observation room, taking her own notes on the conversation in front of her, determined to still be part of it even while making her point.

Seven days passed before she was back in that booth. The tension between them had scarcely eased, and she was sure that in the case they were now working, he was doing everything he could to avoid her. It seemed par for the course, with the way things had become. The night the call had come in, he had refused to let her in to see the scene, barking at her instead to work the perimeter, which she knew he had already done. Mistrust and humiliation boiling up, she had done as told, and resigned herself to the idea that this was, now, just the way that things were.

Now he was nailing the suspect, and in spite of the reward she ought to have felt that they had avenged another two deaths, she couldn't help but feel pushed out. She had been kept right on the edge of this case, like a child or a student, whose over-eager attentions might compromise crucial evidence. She was frustrated all to hell, and looking for someone to yell at, mentally or otherwise.

And there he was, on the other side of the glass. Such a thin veil. As much as she wanted to separate work and her personal life, she sometimes, inevitably, could not. Where Grissom was concerned, it didn't always happen like that. The irony of it was a constant shot to the heart. If she had him, if he loved her, she would never breathe a word, if that was what he wanted. She knew she'd be happy to hold him in her heart, a secret, private life that was all she needed. No words necessary. No fanfare. But when they went on like this, burning and rejecting and spiting one another, she wanted to wear in on a t-shirt. It was hard to keep inside.

Sara listened to Grissom talk the doctor into a corner. She waited for it to be over, hearing the doctor all but confess. He stood up with his attorney. Grissom called him back, and began to speak, words that made Sara's blood run cold. Words that she would carry to her grave.

What? She stood there long after he had gone and the room was empty. She replayed and replayed the words in her head, tears rushing to the fore. She tried to imagine how she would make it to the ladies room or the parking lot or the locker room without someone seeing her. She couldn't look at another person or form another sentence.

_Someone young and beautiful. _

_Offers us a life._

_I couldn't do it. _

How unlike him, she thought, to be so careless. To say the words. How bittersweet, that for the first time ever, Grissom verbalised something, anything, about her, them, all that had festered and blossomed between them – and it had been to lay it to rest. Her life really was a joke, a cruel and unlikely combination of disappointments and successes, career forging ahead of the rest of her, leaving her devoid of all human contact. Sara stood in that tiny little box, watching the chair that he had left, the chair in which he had spoken about her and in one breath confirmed and devastated her best hopes – and felt utterly, unmistakably, alone.

A strange calm settled over the lab that afternoon. As though in purging his thoughts Grissom had lightened the tension that walked the halls, and in hearing them Sara had let go of those last die-hard dreams. Shouldn't she always have known? She chastised herself for not knowing, for not drawing this conclusion without having it spelt out to her. She could console herself only with the knowledge that the moments in which Grissom had wavered, had begun to assent, had looked at her that way, in startled, unfettered emotion, those had been real. They just weren't enough.

He came to find her at the end of the shift. It was early in the morning and she had now had over five hours to digest the words that had left her so bereft earlier. She felt numb, empty, as though it was close to over.

"Hey. Where have you been?" Sara looked up from the crime scene photographs she had been poring over for hours, making notes, being thorough. Losing herself in the detail.

"Here. I wanted to get these logged and get a head start."

"Anything new?"

Yes, she wanted to say. The man I have longed for, lusted after and lay awake thinking about for the better part of four years has left me in no doubt of the impossibility of my feelings ever being reciprocated.

"No, nothing yet," she said, offering no clue as to her state of mind. She was done with that now. Too tired to play.

"Case closed on Debbie Marlin." She looked up.

"I heard." It was the truth. He didn't blink.

"Everything alright, Sara?"

"Perfectly."

"You look tired," he said, and she could see that his earlier unease around her seemed to have vanished. Must have been cathartic, she thought.

" Actually, I am. Very." She aligned the photographs together and tidied them, shuffling them on the table in a swift, decisive motion. He was taken aback.

"I'm exhausted. By all of this." She looked right at him. He froze. "But I get it now."

"Get what?"

"It's okay, we don't even need to have this conversation any more, you know? Because I understand." She placed the photographs back in their folder and picked up her jacket, glancing at the clock and seeing with relief that she could make her escape.

"Again… what?" She walked past him into the hall, turned back for the last word.

"I said… I _heard_."

It didn't take him long to catch on, she guessed by the time she turned the corner his mouth was sinking at the corners. He was behind her as she opened the doors to the building, following her without actually trying to stop her. He got in front of her as she reached her car.

"Sara.."

" What are you doing? What is there to say, now?"

"I.."

"Exactly. You said it all earlier. Pretty black and white." She stashed her kit and opened the drivers door. She turned before she got in, leaning one arm casually over the doorframe.

"Good to know though. That the worst things you think of yourself, that you're not good enough, not worth it, good to know they're all true." She slammed the door before he could interject, wanting the satisfaction of leaving him standing there, speechless. God knows he had left her like that enough times. If this was the last word, she was damn well going to have it.

She drove faster than she knew she should, and didn't care one bit. She passed a cop car doing more than the limit and didn't even slow. Her bravado seemed to pay off, as no lights followed her. She was alone on the road that lead to her apartment, wallowing in her isolation and willing it to go on and on, knowing that seeing him at work that night would seem like too soon.

She stalked into the kitchen, looking at the mark on the refrigerator door where it had fallen victim to her foot the week before. She didn't care. She was calm now, rage replaced by a kind of white, a blanket of resolve and resistance. She was good at this, retreating within herself when the world threw stones. When there was a knock at the door, she ignored it.

Part of her knew it was him, if only because no-one else ever came to her door. No-one else knew where she lived. Even her neighbours knew she valued her privacy. She let it go, and waited, not even bothering to keep the noise down and pretend she was out. He'd know she was there, her car was outside. Another knock, and she turned on the stove to boil some water. As she spooned sugar on top of the tea bag she wondered how long it would take for him to go home. Not long, she figured, since if what he had to say had been that important he'd have said it years ago.

As she took the kettle from the stove, her cell phone rang. She picked it up grudgingly. Work issue phones could not be ignored, even if the supervisor calling was also the man she wanted most to avoid. It could legitimately be about work, and that was all she had. She kept it professional.

"Sidle."

"Sara, open the door."

"I'm busy."

"No you're not, you're pissed off."

"Yep, well, amounts to the same thing. I'd like to be left alone."

"So you heard what I said, is that what's wrong? You heard me say I couldn't do it."

"I don't need it on vinyl, thank you."

"Did you hear what else I said?"

Sara sighed, wanting this to stop.

"Did you? Did you hear me say that you were beautiful? Somebody I could care about?"

"It didn't make any difference, though, did it? Because I'm still the one who got passed over. You'd rather spend your days with the dead than spend your nights with me."

"Sara, I do spend my nights with you. We work together every night. Don't you think that I think about that? That maybe there are ways of having you without risking it, without it compromising us?"

"That makes me feel so much better."

"Did you hear me say that I woke up one day? Did you think about that bit? You know when that was? The day you came to Vegas."

She was out of comebacks. Her head hurt.

"A part of me changed for good when you came here. Before that, all I'd had was work, and nothing challenged that. Then you show up, and I'm having to stop myself saying something…..or doing something… that would undermine everything I've held dear for so long."

"Well then I really should congratulate you. On being much better at that than I am."

"I'm terrible at it."

"You're not."

"I am, because I've let you think that I care more about my job or the lab than I do about you." Suddenly, she was mad. Blind. She flung open the door and padded quickly down the hall. Down the single flight of stairs. There he was, leaning on the hood of his car, the phone to his ear. He stood at the sight of her.

"Don't you think it's hard for me, too? Do I not care about _my_ job? You have a career, a brilliant one. I'm still just at the beginning, and anything that would jeopardise that, I should be running a mile.." She spat the words at him, but he didn't flinch.

"I know you care about your job too. That's why it's never been a good idea to talk about this." She folded her arms in disbelief.

"Except to suspects who, by the way, have managed to do exactly what you couldn't." Her voice fell, and tears were welling. When she spoke again, it was low, barely more than a whisper.

"Tell me, Grissom, did you admire him or pity him?"

"Both."

Sara bit her lip, fighting the tears.

"Because he had the courage to do what I couldn't, yes, but he also lost it all. The career, but more than that, the woman. I couldn't go through that. Keeping things the way they are between us is the only way I know to keep you close."

The tears came, and she hated them, wanting to stay strong. His face contorted at the sight.

"That's lame," she said, quietly, defiantly.

"It's true."

"I don't believe it."

"I am afraid of losing my job. But I'm more afraid of losing you."

There was a silence that hung over them as Sara wiped her eyes and Grissom collected himself. He sighed.

"Sara.. I don't know what to do about this." The words beat a path through her mind, echoes of another day, another meeting like this in which reason had won and she had lost.

"You've said that before."

"And what did you say to me?" She hesitated. He took her hand in his ever so gently, one thumb stroking her palm. The touch set her alight, and she wanted to swear at him again.

"I said, I do."

He took her other hand, and held them both tightly.

"Sara.. I still haven't figured this out. But I don't want to be too late." She wasn't sure if it was his touch, or the fact that he remembered their entire conversation of almost a year ago, but something made her smile. He waited not a moment longer before kissing her, a slow, tender, beautiful thing, sending her mind and body reeling. She was shaking, and she didn't care. Let him see, let him feel, what he did to her. It was about time.He HHHhehgrehvg

END.


End file.
